Note from the Author: … This was supposed to be a drabble!
Uncovering
Hinata loved Neji's hands. They were strong and warm, with calloused fingertips and pale scars – so much like him, the Neji he didn't show often – her Neji-nii-san – faulted, but perfect in her eyes.
So – naturally – she hated his bandages. The first time she had spent the night in his bed, she had awoken with his lovely naked fingers splayed on her stomach, those accursed bandages discarded on the floor. She had glared at them, wishing her gaze could make them combust, for hiding his beautiful skin.
In the mornings, she would sit cross-legged on his bed and watch him put them on. He wrapped his right leg first, thigh to ankle – as his flesh disappeared, so did his smile, and he became gradually less talkative. Then he did his torso – starting under his left arm – and right arm. By the time he was finished, he was the sober, serious boy she had known and feared all her life.
Her favorite pastime, of course, was taking them off, which he let her do each evening when he came home. She started at the fingertips, folding the bandages delicately – though she wanted to burn them – as they unwrapped, enjoying the exposure of him as they came away – and he slowly became her Neji again.
She quietly asked him once why he wore them.
He didn't answer, instead inclining his head and leaving.
She hated that he didn't kiss her goodbye.
She asked him again that night, as she cuddle close in his arms, finding his bare chest much nicer to have her head against.
"They're protection." He murmured, stroking her hair.
"From emotion?" she asked before she could stop herself.
He hesitated before saying, "It's easier to kill when you don't feel."
"I think I'd rather feel." She said softly, fingers absently twining in the dark strands that fell across his collarbone.
"Let me give you an example." He shifted, pulling himself up to lean against the headboard. "There's a very pretty kunoichi assassin, and I have to kill her before she kills me. If I didn't shut out most of my emotion, what would I be thinking?"
"I don't know." She replied quietly, feeling a little like she was listening to her mother teach her about morals.
"I'd be thinking that this pretty kunoichi probably has someone waiting for her to come home – just like I have a pretty kunoichi of my own. I'd think about how I would feel if you were taken away from me – and then I wouldn't be able to kill her. Next thing you know, I'm dead."
Hinata didn't speak, choosing instead to press herself against him, hiding her face in his hair. "I'm sorry for being selfish." She whispered. "I didn't think about it that way."
The next morning, she picked up his folded bandages from the table beside the bed. "Neji-nii-san, can I put them on for you?"
He smiled and nodded, sitting on the end of the bed and directing her, though she had watched him do it so many times, she knew how. As she did it, she silently thanked them for keeping her Neji alive, even though she hated what they made him.
Of course, when he pulled her close, kissing her gently and whispering "I love you," she felt like she could learn to like them.
0
Note from the Author: … :starts digging Neji's grave with the OOC shovel: